In this solo podcast, Ian Peterman, CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, explains the four primary categories of product prototypes and how they differ in purpose, fidelity, cost, and timing within the product development process. He begins by emphasizing that prototype types are distinct from manufacturing methods, then walks through each category: 1. Fit prototypes – low‑fidelity, non‑cosmetic models used solely to verify that parts physically fit together and that assembly processes work (e.g., 3D‑printed mock circuit boards, body panel gaps). 2. Cosmetic prototypes – higher‑fidelity visual mockups that look and feel like the final product but contain no functional components; they are used for presentations, photography, concept validation, and stakeholder feedback. 3. Functional and pre‑production prototypes – functional prototypes incorporate real hardware and electronics but may lack final surface finish; pre‑production prototypes add finishing steps (painting, final materials) to resemble the final product more closely. 4. Production prototypes – first runs on the actual production tooling, fully finished, packaged, and shipped as they would be to customers; they serve as QC checks before full‑scale launch. Peterman also touches on cost considerations, noting that price varies with fidelity and intended use, and stresses the importance of selecting the appropriate prototype type at each stage to de‑risk the product and streamline the path to manufacturing.
Chapters
Hello, my name is Ian Peterman. I'm CEO and founder of Peterman Design Firm, and today I want to talk about types of prototypes, not methods. You know, this isn't 3D printing versus CNC or something like that. It's about Prototypes and how they're used and when we use them. And I talked about a little bit, talking about cost for prototypes, you know, what they cost. And I mentioned some of the pricing difference between prototypes comes down to what it's for, and therefore the type of prototype that we're doing. So there's kind of 4 general categories when I talk to clients that I talk about in terms of prototyping. There's fit ones. Which are, they're just for fit. They're not cosmetic. They're not going to necessarily look pretty. It's just to make sure that parts fit together. So assembly works, you know, you might be swapping out, we might make a 3D printed circuit board, which means it's not an actual circuit board. It's just a shape and an object that is the right, that fits the right 3D physical form so that we can, you know, go through assembly, make sure that There's tools for assembling, make sure that it goes through the process properly, make sure that there's, you know, it's like you would do something like that for body paneling on a car, make sure the body panel gaps are right, make sure everything fits, make sure screws fit, make sure hardware fits, all those, whatever those components are, make sure they fit together and they look right. So it's, you know, press-fit parts and anything else like that. Then you have cosmetic ones, and those are the you might make an entire product. You might, for example, use my mouse again. You might make this as one 3D printed part. For example, there's no electronics in it. It could be completely empty. It's it's going to be finished up. This could all be one one hunk of plastic. That has been sanded and finished and, and cleaned up, and now it looks like this. You would pick it up and go, oh, that's pretty great. And you notice that it was pretty light because it had nothing inside of it. But you would be able to look at it and say, oh, this is what it's going to look like. I know exactly what it's going to look like in its physical form. You can play with it. You know, it's basically the pre-rendering, this is what you would do. You would make a cosmetic model. They're really great for presentations. You can send them to people to get input. You can put them in different scenarios. You can use them for photography, product photography, because it looks like the real thing. But it won't work. They're not even the right components. It's not for anything production-related. And we use those a lot in concepting. So if we're concepting and we're getting down to a few different options and we really want to see what the product looks like in certain situations, and renders are great, but they only go so far. And even with advances in VR and AR technology, it only gets you so far right now. And so nothing beats creating a mockup model, cosmetic model, and putting it in its actual habitat. Where is it going to actually be? And looking at it and, you know, not actually using it, but I can sure pretend to use this mouse if it weren't a real one. I could pretend to use it. I can move it around on my desk. I can feel it, and I'd have an idea of what it's gonna— what it's gonna feel like, what it's gonna look like. You know, and especially for high aesthetic products, it can be very valuable. It's Also something that people use in presentations as a cosmetic model, so they can show this is what the product is going to look like, or this is what we think it'll look like, and we want to ideate with that. Then we have kind of a mix. Pre-production and production are basically really similar, but pre-production means that you're not using the actual tooling. So this is, you know, like what I talked about before on injection molding, is doing things that aren't the actual final process. You're not actually running a real final tooling, but you are producing the parts to spec. So that means it's still getting produced, it's still getting finished. So, you know, if it's painted, if it has electronics on it, electronics are in it. And sometimes we call them pre-production, sometimes we call them functional. The only difference, and kind of in that same bucket, the only difference is pre-production, you're going to finish it completely. Functional means that it's not just a fit model, you're using real hardware in it, but you're not doing things like painting it. It's going to be raw plastic or raw metal, and it's just to make sure, you know, it functions. So lights turn on. Screen turns on. Push buttons on a screen, it does X. Connect it to your phone, phone app you click, it does something. That's a function. And pre-production just takes it one little step. It's the fancier version of a function one in that you finish it. So now it looks like it is it. It's unless you knew and understood the production process and what the final production tooling is going to do. If you know the difference and can tell a part whether it's injection molded or it's been a highly finished 3D printed part cosmetically, because you know how it seems, you know what it's supposed to look like, and the lines that you get when you have it injection molded, If you can't, if you don't know what those are, then you wouldn't know the difference between a pre-production and actual production. And then the last bucket is production prototypes. And those are just really just first runs. So it's on production tooling, the final manufacturer is making it, they are on the right tooling, they've been shipped through the right processes, they've gone through packaging, they have everything It is, you could sell it. And all the, the only point of that is to make sure that all the tooling and all the prototyping and all that work done actually has created a product that meets those requirements. And that those pre-production or those production prototypes, sorry, those are what you, if you're doing an influencer campaign, Those are probably what you send off. They're not first, you know, if you were to sell like a number one, you serialize your first 500, you probably won't serialize these because you're only going to get a couple of them. You're probably only going to get 5, 10, 15 of them. They're off the line. They're just there. They're production quality, but they're not— you don't approve them because they are simply for QC. They're to make sure your production team, your manufacturer, your co-packer, or your, your packaging company, your distribution company, that your product was able to go from raw material to you. You would just be the end customer to make sure it all works and it actually showed up and it is what it's supposed to be. So that means that your production prototype, it could come in the packaging that it's supposed to, shipped through your distribution channel, through your distributor, through your box packaging company, it's all there. And so you're able to then open it and QC it and know, okay, well, here everything is there, or catch an issue. And so basically, as long as you don't catch any issues there, then you're free to go into production. Otherwise, you go through some iterations. So those, those are the 4 main types. Cosmetic fit, function, and pre-production, and then production prototype, which is really just production, just the first couple to make sure you did it right.
